The Life of Lily Black
by Katie D
Summary: This is a sequel to Theresa's


A/N- This is a sequel of sorts to "Not What You'd Expect", by Theresa. You don't really have to have read it to understand this, just understand that Sirius and Hermione are a couple. Theresa pretty much got sick of the entire story, and I have her blessing to write more of it, because I didn't want it to end. I'm thinking of trying to make a series based on this, and connect all the dots of this a bit. That is, if anyone likes it, so please, read, review, and tell me what you think. It's kind of different, so let me know if you hate it or anything.

Lily

"Lily Black." Dumbledore read the name, and Hermione Granger-Black watched her daughter walk across the stage and accept her diploma. As other graduates names were read, she allowed herself to think back to the years that had led up to this.

* * *

"Sirius, I'm pregnant." Twenty year old Hermione beamed at Sirius. He smiled back, and pulling her in a hug he swung her around the kitchen. Just as he had for the year they'd been married, Harry used his impeccable timing to walk in just at that moment. 

"Why's everyone so happy?" Harry smiled at the sight of them, his two best friends, faces red with happiness.

"I'm pregnant!" Hermione hugged Harry too. She rushed at him so quickly that he almost tipped over.

"Whoa, hey. That's great! I seem to remember you being slightly less happy the last time this happened." Hermione whacked him on the back of the head for spoiling the moment.

Grinning, she replied, "Come on Harry. We're married now. We want a family. I don't see you starting one anytime soon." They all laughed, and Harry stayed for a celebratory dinner.

* * *

"Sirius, isn't she beautiful? She's beautiful." Hermione looked down at the bundle in her arms. She had no hair, but she had ten toes, and ten fingers, and to Hermione she was perfect, with big brown eyes like Sirius'. 

Sirius smiled, "She's as beautiful as her Mom." He kissed the top of Hermione's head, and bent to kiss one of Lily Marie's little hands. At just that moment, Remus and Harry walked in.

Harry walked over and kissed Hermione on the cheek. "She's perfect Herm." 

Meanwhile Remus was embracing Sirius. "I don't remember anything as happy as this since Harry was born. What's her name?

"Lily Marie," came Hermione's response. Everyone in the room could hear Harry's breath catch in his throat, and Hermione could see tears in his eyes.

* * *

"Daddy! Hawwy!" Hermione rushed to the kitchen window to see what was happening to her little girl, her little girl who was undergoing her first flying lesson. She'd started outside on the porch of their new home in the countryside, (they'd moved out of their apartment a month earlier) but seeing her precious seven year old daughter rising even three feet off the ground made her queasy, so she'd gone in.

When she reached the window she was glad she had come inside. There was Lily, only four foot tall herself, fifteen feet in the air, Sirius and Harry flying quickly upward to fetch her. Seeing Hermione pale and tense at the window Sirius yelled, "She just jumped a bit more than advisable this time, but she held on, she's a natural." Hermione just shook her head and hurried back from the window. She wouldn't be comfortable seeing her daughter fly for several years.

* * *

"You'll have so much fun babe. You'll meet all kinds of new friends, like mom met Harry and Ron and I met Remus." Sirius was trying to reassure his eleven year old daughter as she stood on Platform 9 3/4.

"And James and Lily," Lily added a bit sadly. She'd heard all about her namesake and her father's best friend over the years. "I know I'll have fun, and I'll learn so much, I'll just miss you and mom and Harry." Lily, like her mother, had already read Hogwarts: A History, and all of her first year books, it made Sirius smile to hear her sounding so much like Hermione. He also smiled that Remus wasn't included in the list of those she would miss. He was now Defense of the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts.

Hermione, standing next to Sirius, was not smiling so brightly. She was happy for her daughter, and had encouraged her, and taken her to Diagon Alley for all of her supplies, but it did not enthuse her that her only child was going away for ten months. 

Her eyes moist with unshed tears she said, "You'll love it Lily. Good luck, and I love you." Lily hugged her and said goodbye, and then Hermione watched her baby confidently board the Hogwarts Express.

"It'll be okay Herm. We'll send her lots of owls, and Remus will watch over her for us. She'll love it, and," he added with eyes sparkling mischievously, "we'll have the entire house to ourselves." The first comments made her smile, and the last brought about a small laugh. 

"Right, hon. Right." They apparated away.

* * *

Mom and Dad,

_How's everything at home? I'm doing okay. I have two really good friends, Patrice Chang and Serena Longbottom. I love Remus' class. Even though I have to call him Professor Lupin. He's almost as good a teacher as he is an uncle. _Hermione smiled at the recognizable names, but it quickly became a grimace as she read on in her daughter's first letter. _Some people aren't as nice though. Why do all the kids gasp when they hear my name, and ask me about Dad? I know you've never told me everything, but I didn't know the rest of the world knew something I didn't. And when Professor Snape called role on the first day he said, "Black? You're *theirs*?" And then he said something about how Dad was disgusting. What's a harlot? I know you warned me about him, but I think he insulted Mom and I'm not even sure why. I Love You, Lily. P.S. I'm in Gryffindor!_

Sirius yelled so loudly that night he could probably have been heard in France. "I can't believe he'd say that to her. She's eleven! And insulting you! That's an awful thing to say to child. That snake!" He ranted on for almost two hours before Hermione quieted him.

"He's Snape. We knew he wouldn't like her because she's our daughter. I can't believe that he would be so vulgar and rude in a classroom, but we can't do anything about it, just explain. We need to tell her about you. I know we wanted to wait for awhile, but when she comes home at Christmas we have to tell her about Azkaban." Sirius only nodded, and watched as Hermione sat to compose a reply.

_Dear Lily,_

I'm glad that you're meeting new friends, and that you like Remus' class. Ask him for me at the beginning of a class if you can fight a bogart sometime. I'm sorry about the questions you've been asked about your Dad. We'll tell you why that happened when you come home over the holidays. We would have told you sooner, but neither of us thought you were quite ready, and we didn't think your classmates would know about the situation. I promise there's nothing wrong, and don't worry about it too much. As for Snape, your father has been screaming about him for the two hours since we read your letter. He was entirely inappropriate in what he said to you, I've a mind to write Professor Dumbledore and tell him about it. Snape despises your father, and he doesn't much like me. He went to school with your Dad and he taught me during all of my seven years at Hogwarts. What he was referring to was his opinion that it was wrong for Dad and I to marry because I'm twenty years younger. Don't listen to him, he's just ranting because he dislikes our family, and if he says anything like that again, or treats you unfairly, tell Remus, he'll help you. I'll explain Snape's phrasing to you when you're a little older. It's good to hear you're in Gryffindor. Dad and I miss you and we love you.

Love, 

Mom

* * *

"Dad was in prison?!? For twelve years? For killing James and Lily?!?" Eleven year-old Lily, her face stained with tears, was screaming at her parents. They had just told her about Sirius' past. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Sirius walked toward his daughter and put his arm around her, pulling her close, he sat them both back down on the couch. "I don't like to think about, I just consider it twelve years missing from my life. We wanted to wait until you were older, I never imagined that any of your classmates would know anything about it, I was released almost twenty years ago."

Lily pulled away from him. "You should have told me!" she screamed, running up the stairs and slamming the door to her room.

* * *

"I went on a date." The words seemed to Hermione like they came out of nowhere, but she heard them exit the mouth her thirteen year old daughter, currently sitting on the edge of her parents bed, helping Hermione get ready for a New Year's Eve party at Sirius' firm. Hermione was rather surprised, Lily never spoke of 'boys' when she was home, what she said about Hogwarts was limited to classes and her friends.

"Where? When? Who?" Her daughter had been on her first date and she hadn't even known about it.

"Will Bell. He's a fifth year in Gryffindor. He's a chaser on our Quidditch team. We had lunch at the Leaky Cauldron on the last Hogsmeade trip." Hermione could hear the airiness in her daughter's voice, and she observed a dreamy look in her eyes. "I didn't write you about it because I knew Dad would read the letter, and I thought he might freak out a little since Will's two years older."

Hermione gave a laugh. "You're right, he probably would have had Harry performing background checks at the ministry on the poor guy." Her tone changed to a conspiratorial whisper, "Is he cute?" As she listened to her daughter elaborating on the features of one William Bell she smiled to herself at how Sirius would react to their thirteen year old daughter dating, and thought back to how he used to interrogate Harry after he came home, when they were all still sharing Sirius' apartment. That made her smile even more, until she came to the thought of Harry and Dominique, when a small wave of fear that her daughter *was* growing up, washed over her.

* * *

The last few years moved more quickly. She remembered when Gryffindor had won the Quidditch Cup...

"They won!" Hermione was reading the latest letter from fifteen year old Lily, at Hogwarts. "They won the quidditch cup Sirius. Gryffindor beat Mildred Flint and the Slytherins." Lily had been made the Gryffindor seeker in her second year, and captain of the team in her fifth year, and they had worked all season trying to take the cup from Slytherin. 

... last year when they'd found out that Lily was going to be Head Girl...

"I made it! I made it! I made it!" Lily ran screaming into the kitchen where Hermione was seated reading the Daily Prophet and Sirius was cooking a Sunday breakfast of fried potatoes and eggs. Hermione dropped her paper, and Lily hugged her father, who still had spatula in hand.

"What happened?" Hermione was a bit confused at her daughter's behavior. 

"I'm Head Girl! Just like you and Lily!" Lily was jumping up and down. Hermione shot up out of her chair to hug her daughter, and Sirius, smiling, stood by the stove watching his two favorite women, and thinking how proud Lily would have been of her 'niece'. That night they'd all gone to the Top of the Wand to celebrate.

... and finally winter break of that year when Lily had been job hunting.

Lily wanted to work in defense research, to find ways to block the Unforgivable Curses. She was hoping the ministry would have a department where she could pursue this work. She'd spent dinner one night explaining her thoughts to her parents. "At first I wanted to work at the Ministry of Defense in London, but Remus told me about a non-ministry organization in Hogwarts. It's a non-profit research center run on Ministry grants, so I'd have to apply to the ministry to work there. They do exactly the kind of work that I want to do, but they also only take on one new apprentice every few years.

"I've heard of that," Sirius put in, "Harry's old girlfriend worked there."

"Which one, Hilda, Truiscia, Brenda, Miranda?" Harry's love-life was a running joke in their house hold, and Hermione knew that a joke was just what Lily needed at the moment to get her mind off of her rather stressful job search.

Lily laughed, and then got more serious again. "I've got applications for both of those openings. I just have to wait and see if I get one. You know how long ministry paperwork takes." With Hermione working there they all did know.

* * *

They still didn't know what position Lily had been accepted for. Hermione was snapped out of her reminisces by Dumbledore's voice. "Let's hear it for all of the Hogwarts class of 2009!" The Great Hall erupted in applause, and Hermione leaned over to smile at Sirius, and Harry sitting on the other side of him. They both stood to go find Lily for the graduation dinner.

After some searching among graduates they found her. Lily was five-foot-five, with beautiful curly black hair and big brown eyes, in her crimson robes she was hard to miss. She ran up and simultaneously hugged both her parents. When she stepped back she gave them a Cheshire-cat like smile, "I got the job! I'm the newest apprentice at the Hogsmeade research center."

"That's great!" Sirius responded enthusiastically, and there was a new round of hugs.

Lily smiled at Harry before the next statement, she'd talked to him about this possibility when she'd visited him at his home in Hogsmeade on the seventh years last visit. "It's just around the block from Harry's house. He's offered, could I stay with him until I find an apartment?" She looked hopefully at her parents.

Sirius reached for Hermione's hand, she put an arm around his shoulders, they smiled at each other, and simultaneously looked at Lily, "NO."

A/N- If you made it this far you are a full-fledged saint, so PLEASE go read and review. BTW, I wrote the whole thing based on thinking the last scene would be cute, but it didn't quite turn out the way I'd envisioned.


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